Sharpening Images For Print

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April 2008
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Just after some advice about what you learned lot do...

I am used to sharpening for on-screen. But am not too sure how I should approach it for print as I've read you need to sharpen more. Assuming I am in PS CS3, should I zoom to 100% and sharpen til it looks sharp, or is that a bit extreme?

The images I am working on are quite grainy black and whites with quite a lot of OoF areas, so sharpening might make this look odd. But I don't want the in-focus bits to look soft either.

Should I maybe look at doing something localised, just sharpening a particular area with a feathered selection?

:shrug:

I guess the quick question I am after the answer to is, if you were preparing a wedding coffee table book, what sort of sharpening would you apply?
 
Watch out pigeons, here comes the cat!

I posted a broadly similar question recently. It seems the answer is not to sharpen too much as the process of printing (I asked re large prints) brings its own sharpening. :thinking:

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=140478

ps - can anyone tell me how to make this link say something else such as 'linky' or 'read here'?

Thanks
 
Boynielaad said:
Watch out pigeons, here comes the cat!

I posted a broadly similar question recently. It seems the answer is not to sharpen too much as the process of printing (I asked re large prints) brings its own sharpening. :thinking:

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=140478

ps - can anyone tell me how to make this link say something else such as 'linky' or 'read here'?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Code: 
[ URL="http://www.upgradeyourmac.co.uk"]HERE[/URL]

The above will show "HERE" yet jump to my site, just remove the first space character (after the first square bracket)
 
Cheers for the link Bonnie, will tootle off for a look.

Why is it that I just start to think I know where I am heading, and I get conflicting info.
 
It's a tricky one and more a case of guess work, as it depends on the size of the image, the paper you are printing on etc.
 
No problem Bonnie :)

Regarding the OP, it looks like i'll just have to suck it and see, and learn from seeing the results if there's anything I need to do different next time.

Thanks chaps and chapesses!
 
Hey Carl, thanks for posting the link to my blog.

If anyone has any questions about my action, feel free to contact me via the blog. Also, if you use later versions of Photoshop, instead of the second pass on sharpening (after resize) you can opt to change the resize to use resize:bicubic sharper. It works about the same.

Also, I recommend some sort of noise reduction prior to these steps. The sharpening can really bring out grain.

Thanks again for the link.
 
Hi PShizzy,

I presumed that I could post this link? Didn't spot anywhere that says that I shouldn't!

Carl.
 
It also depends on what your printing from, some software will add sharpening by default at the printing stage, photoshop doesn't but Q image does for example.
 
I just tried 6 copies of the same picture, but with different sharpening, printed at dscl. I found that what looked best on the screen at 100% pixels, un-resized, gave the best print. That goes a bit against what I've read which is that you need to over-sharpen so it looks wrong on screen as printing will soften it.

But maybe I didn't try enough cases in the middle range of sharpening, as I hadn't really noticed how soft my test picture was in the first place. But following (maybe wrongly!) the advice I'd found on the net that you should sharpen for 1/100 th of an inch on the print, was not the best. At least using smart-sharpen with a radius of 3 pixels at 300 dpi gave visible blotchiness without improving detail as much as 150% and 1.5 pixels.
 
As already stated, it depends! Variables include what type of printer, print size and viewing distance etc. For a home inkjet printer though you'll want to make your image look slightly oversharpened [and turn off your printer "enhancements" so they don't do similar] for which I tend to use the high-pass sharpening technique with a radius around 2 - although that depends on the print size - and adjust opacity to suit.
 
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